Header & Image Editing

My header image says a lot about my website. Right away when looking at the image, it is easy to see that the page has something to do with exercise, but more specifically lifting weights. The image I chose uses darker colors along with my theme which I specifically chose to give off a kind of bad-a** vibe. I want people to come on to my website and grow a new confidence they never thought they could bring out. I think the color scheme and the image of choice kind of shows strength and I want people to realize they can find their own strength through lifting by using my website. I also specifically chose a woman to be in my header image because there is usually a connotation that men lift and women only do cardio. There is always this stereotype that men are stronger than women and that women cannot be strong, and I want people to see that women can be just as strong, if not stronger. I also want women to be able to see that they should not underestimate their own strengths based off of what they have been told by others.

I found all of my source images through the advanced search option on google. I made sure that every image I used said that I was able to use, share or modify, even commercially. As an extra step, I then went on to the websites of each image and kept an eye out for anything that would tell me that I was not able to use the image.

To create a multi-layer image, I used a few techniques describes in Manovich’s article. Photo editing applications such as Pixlr “contain many dozens of separate commands” and although I could not use all of them, I was able to incorporate a few into my pictures. One of the first steps I took when editing my photo was to play around with the lighting on it. I adjusted the contrast and brightness, and then went on to trying out the blur tool mentioned in the article. I ended up not using the blur tool, but instead I opted to using the lasso tool to cut out a piece of an image. Using the advanced search on google, I found an image of a person squatting, and I then cut the image out of the background. This created another layer on the image which I was able to use to move the picture around, and edit only certain parts of the image. I used this image as my website icon which can be seen at the top of my page. I also edited my header image by cropping it an adjusting the sharpness, brightness and contrast.  [PDF link]

Davison defines a bitmap as a “two-dimensional presentation of the bits in a computer’s memory”. In other words, bitmaps are tiny pixels that altogether make up an image. In his article, Davis talks about ‘MS Paint’: a “bitmap-based graphics program”. MS Paint does not stand for one specific program, but rather any program that is considered the standard for the time period. When talking about the images produced by MS Paint, Davison describes the image as an “authentic computer aesthetic rather than a simulation of traditional painting”, meaning that the image looks more digital and realistic than a regular hand-painted piece of art. I think that is similar to the images I produce when using applications like Pixlr, and I think that Pixlr is very similar to the MS Paint application that Davison talks about. One difference though is that Davison talks about the bitmaps being either “on or off”, and the image was produced in black and white. This makes sense considering the bitmap images Davison is talking about were created long before the image I produced. My images however are in color, and are most likely a sharper image than what Davison describes. On page 285, Davison discusses how a bitmap’s color is determined by the “bit-depth” or the allotted information used for each pixel. One thing he repeatedly mentions is the fact that the use of a mouse when creating these bitmap images are necessary for “an authentic computer aesthetic”. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that the mouse adds to the experience in my opinion, I would say that the mouse is necessary in order to edit and change an image so I would agree that that is a similarity between mine and Davison’s production process. Overall I would say there are some similarities and some differences, but for the most part the process and outcome are very similar. [PDF link]